Number of Trains and Locomotives Needed For Branch Line Ops

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
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GregC’s thread got me wondering about the ops of my own layout in more detail. I did not want to hijack his thread so I started a new one. Hopefully, information provided here will help others too.

Lifting part of a quote from dehusman’s response in Greg’s thread:

How would I go about establishing an operating schedule around a similar sized branch line?

When completed, I will spot about 25 cars on the layout. (Another 25 will be in staging as the swap-out cars), There is no mainline through running.

Car spots at industries (one town) are 6,5,4,3,3,3, 2. A train(s) comes from staging (interchange marshalling yard…not different originations) and delivers cars to the industries.

I’m not providing much information to go on…

…but how many trains would you use to deliver those cars, provided you wanted to keep maximum train length to about 7 cars (my shortest runaround siding can hold about 68 inches of cars)?

Obviously its a matter of choice, but I wouldn’t want to deliver them by 25, 1 car trains, nor 3, 7 car trains to keep some variety.

And the number of trains would tend to dictate how many locomotives might be used on the layout. Not wanting one loco to be responsible for every train, although that could be possible. I don’t know how a real railroad would know how many locos were needed for the branch line.

I have some ideas, but I thought that I would reach out to more experienced modelers or to folks who have real railroad knowledge to sort of help out with a template.

Not asking for a lot of effort from an

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A couple of questions, Douglas…

First, will you be switching out all 25 cars every operating session?

Second, do you have more than one industry that will take a product produced by another industry, or from staging? An example in my scheme - I have two refineries. Both require tank cars that they will load and deliver to customers both on the layout and in staging. So tank cars from staging will be delivered to the refineries for filling, and full tank cars will go to oil dealers around the layout, but mostly to staging. For efficiency, almost all the filled tank cars go first to the main yard, then are sorted into local trains or through trains to staging.

So how many trains you need depends also on complexity of the moves that have to be completed. If you pick up cars from one industry that needs to go to another one and the train has already visited the industrial area where the delivery industry sits, it will take two trains to move that car to the right place - the first taking it to your yard for inclusion into the second for delivery to the customer. (Does that make sense?). For economic reasons, a two-train move may make more sense than bouncing back and forty all over the layout, so (theoretially) delaying shipments to many other customers.

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Not necessarily all 25 cars each session. Operations, at this point, simply takes cars from the staging area to the industries on the far end of the layout. All 50 cars would stay on the layout in their respective places (different cars would be fiddled on and off to get different roadnames and numbers).

I want to keep the terms straight. I think of one swap out of the 25 cars in staging with the 25 cars that are spotted on the layout as one operating “cycle”. Maybe that’s the wrong way to think about it.

The number of operating sessions within each cycle is the variable. Lets say I have 8 car trains. I could complete 1 cycle in three trains (plus one car left over). So if it takes only three trains, it might be one “session”.

If I break it up into a 7 car train, a 3 car train, a 4 car train, a 5 car train…etc. It might take 8 trains to get through one cycle. Dependng upon how much time I want to spend operating, it might take three “sessions” to complete one cycle.

No. All of the industries that receive deliveries get their cars from staging. All cars that ship products ship them to staging. One industry (Solo Cup) receives plastic pellets in covered hoppers from staging, and ships plastic plates and cups in boxcars to staging. Other than that one industry, its an either/

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Douglas, I think you are answering your own question. [:)]

It is not only the obvious freight vehicles; don’t forget the ‘twice weekly’ coal/oil. The ‘once a fortnight’ office supplies. Daily deliveries of foodstuffs for the staff. A special boxvan delivery of machinery to replace the broken on in the factory. A ‘special order’ means extra boxvan/s. I am sure you can think of others.

Okay, some would arrive by road, but not on my railroad. [:)] Arriving by rail brings more variety (and enjoyment imo).

Have fun.

David

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It seems to me that you are using too many cars. Every car spot would not be occupied every day. With 25 car spots I think a reasonable number of cars would be 10 to 12. With a 7 car per train limit, that’s likely two trains per operating session.

I live near the Alexander Railroad, an 18 mile short line on an old Southern Railway branch from Statesville to Taylorsville, NC. They have four to five operable locomotives.

Another nearby short line is the Yadkin Valley Railroad. With 93 miles of track, 16 customers, 11,500 annual carloads (31 per day) and 10 locomotives. They usually operate two daily trains with each train having two crew shifts.

Ray

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Yes, you’re right. I designed the layout so that the maximum number of cars could be spotted at the same time…to give the layout sufficient room, but the operating plan would not have all cars spotted to the maximum at the same time. Cycling all 25 cars through the plan happens when the last of the 25 is cycled through, but there will likely be cars that are repeatedly cycled through before the last car of the 25 is. If that makes sense.

That’s part of the variations that impact how many trains and locomotives I need, that needs to get sorted out.

Part of this is developing a switch list, so to speak. And melding that task with an idea of how many times a week a concrete products producer wil need a 6 car cut of cement hoppers. Or a bakery needing a three car cut of corn syrup tank cars.

I think I understand the basic principals of what I need. I’m just having trouble getting started in laying out the big plan.

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An operating “session” is basically what you plan to do - and what does get done - from the time you turn the layout on until you turn it off and go back upstairs. For folks with a shelf switching layout, that may be one person operating one train / engine for an hour; for others with large layouts it’s having a couple dozen folks over once a month to run 30 trains in 4 hours.

One thing I’d add to the earlier replies is, if you have room, it might work better to split the industries into two separate towns. So rather than run a train down a branchline to serve one apparently fairly large town with like 6 industries, run two trains, each serving one town with 3 industries.

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If it were me I would serve the whole thing with one train that goes out and back, or a train in each direction or a trian that runs one direction each session then the other direction the next session. (which would depnd on how the layout was designed and what you wanted to do).

I would put cars at about half the spots and then switch about half the spots each session or train. That means that some spots that were empty would have cars in them, some spots that had cars would be empty, some spots that had cars would have the same cars, some spots that had cars would have new cars and some spots that were empty might still be empty.

If you are an analog switch list kinda guy. Make up a spot deck of cards with each spot on one card. Make up a second pull deck with half as many cards as spots, half of those cars saying hold and half saying pull. Make a switch list that lists all the spots. Write down all the cars that are at spots. Shuffle each deck separately.

Take the pull deck and for each car spotted, draw a card. If its say hold, write hold ont eh switch list and if it says pull write pull on the switch list.

Then take the spot deck, and draw half the number of cards. At staging select a car for each spot on the cards, then make a switch list listing the cars you have selected and the spots they go to.

Run the train. Pull the cars lableled “pull” on the pull list and spot the cars on spot list.

For the next session, but all teh cards back intheir respective decks and reshuffle.

On my website, in the Operations-Carfowarding page, I have some sample switch lists in Excel format. There are three tabs. Short list and long list are just two variations of a protoype styled list, they are half a sheet of paper wide and two different lengths. Work order has both the spot and pull on the same 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. To use the work order write down the locations of th

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The layout is built, so that ain’t happening. That might seem backwards, but the spurs and storage are large enough to handle anything that 68 inch train might use, so its just a matter of figuiring it out.

I’m thinking that the industries would obviously not need service at the same time as another industry. So the railroad would be spotting or swapping cars somewhere a day ealrier than needed…(not being used by the industry of cars).